Tag Archives: Nuclear program of Iran

As world powers debate what a comprehensive nuclear deal with Iran should look like, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to maintain that Israel is not bound by the interim agreement that the P5+1 and Iran struck in Geneva on November 24. Israel, says Netanyahu, “has the right and the obligation to defend itself.” One question then is whether Netanyahu actually intends to strike Iranian nuclear facilities. The other question, no less important, is whether Israel could really pull it off.

A destroyed Egyptian warplane, June 1967

AP

American analysts are divided on Israel’s ability to take effective military action. However, history shows that Israel’s military capabilities are typically underestimated. The Israel Defense Forces keep finding creative ways to deceive and cripple their targets by leveraging their qualitative advantages in manners that confound not only skeptical observers but also, and more important, Israel’s enemies.

Military triumphs like the Six-Day War of June 1967 and the 1976 raid on Entebbe that freed 101 hostages are popular Israeli lore for good reason—these “miraculous” victories were the result of assiduously planned, rehearsed, and well-executed military operations based on the elements of surprise, deception, and innovation, core tenets of Israeli military thinking. Inscribed on one of the walls of the IDF’s officer training academy is the verse from Proverbs 24:6: “For by clever deception thou shalt wage war.” And this has been the principle driving almost all of Israel’s most successful campaigns, like the 1981 bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, the 1982 Beka’a Valley air battle, and the 2007 raid on Syria’s plutonium reactor, all of which were thought improbable, if not impossible, until Israel made them reality.

And yet in spite of Israel’s record, some American experts remain skeptical about Israel’s ability to do anything about Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. Even the most optimistic assessments argue that Israel can only delay the inevitable. As a September 2012 report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies contends: “Israel does not have the capability to carry out preventive strikes that could do more than delay Iran’s efforts for a year or two.” An attack, it continued, “would be complex and high risk in the operational level and would lack any assurances of a high mission success rate.” Equally cautious is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, who argued that while “Israel has the capability to strike Iran and to delay the production or the capability of Iran to achieve a nuclear weapons status,” such a strike would only delay the program “for a couple of years.” The most pessimistic American assessments contend that Israel is all but neutered. Former director of the CIA Michael Hayden, for instance, said that airstrikes capable of seriously setting back Iran’s nuclear program are beyond Israel’s capacity.

Part of the reason that Israeli and American assessments diverge is the difference in the two countries’ recent military histories and political cultures. While the American debate often touches on the limits of military power and its ability to secure U.S. interests around the globe, the Israeli debate is narrower, befitting the role of a regional actor rather than a superpower, and focuses solely on Israel’s ability to provide for the security of its citizens at home. That is to say, even if Israel and the United States saw Iran and its nuclear arms program in exactly the same light, there would still be a cultural gap. Accordingly, an accurate understanding of how Israelis see their own recent military history provides an important insight into how Israel’s elected leaders and military officials view the IDF’s abilities regarding Iran.

Any account of surprise and deception as key elements in Israeli military history has to start with the aerial attack that earned Israel total air supremacy over its adversaries in the June 1967 war. Facing the combined Arab armies, most prominently those of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, Israel’s Air Force was outnumbered by a ratio of 3 planes to 1. Nonetheless, at the very outset of the war, the IAF dispatched its jets at a time when Egyptian pilots were known to be having breakfast. Israeli pilots targeted the enemy’s warplanes on their runways, and in two subsequent waves of sorties, destroyed the remainder of the Egyptian Air Force, as well as Jordan’s and most of Syria’s. Within six hours, over 400 Arab planes, virtually all of the enemy’s aircraft, were in flames, with Israel losing only 19 planes.

Israel’s sweeping military victory over the next six days was due to its intimate familiarity with its enemy’s operational routines—and to deception. For instance, just before the actual attack was launched, a squad of four Israeli training jets took off, with their radio signature mimicking the activity of multiple squadrons on a training run. Because all of Israel’s 190 planes were committed to the operation, those four planes were used to make the Egyptians believe that the IAF was simply training as usual. The IAF’s stunning success was the result not only of intelligence and piloting but also of initiative and creativity, ingredients that are nearly impossible to factor into standard predictive models.

The 1981 raid on Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak is another example of Israel’s ability to pull off operations that others think it can’t. The success caught experts by surprise because every assessment calculated that the target was out of the flight range of Israel’s newly arrived F-16s. The former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Israel Bill Brown recounted that on the day after the attack, “I went in with our defense attaché, Air Force Colonel Pete Hoag, to get a briefing from the chief of Israeli military intelligence. He laid out how they had accomplished this mission. . . . Hoag kept zeroing in on whether they had refueled the strike aircraft en route, because headquarters of the U.S. Air Force in Washington wanted to know, among other things, how in the world the Israelis had refueled these F-16s. The chief of Israeli military intelligence kept saying: ‘We didn’t refuel.’ For several weeks headquarters USAF refused to believe that the Israelis could accomplish this mission without refueling.”

Washington later learned that Israel’s success came from simple and creative field improvisations. First, the pilots topped off their fuel tanks on the tarmac, with burners running, only moments before takeoff. Then, en route, they jettisoned their nondetachable fuel drop tanks to reduce air friction and optimize gas usage. Both these innovations involved some degree of risk, as they contravened safety protocols. However, they gave the Israeli jets the extra mileage needed to safely reach Baghdad and return, and also to gain the element of surprise by extending their reach beyond what the tables and charts that guided thinking in Washington and elsewhere had assumed possible.

Surprise won Israel a similar advantage one year later in the opening maneuvers of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. For students of aerial warfare, the Beka’a Valley air battle is perhaps Israel’s greatest military maneuver, even surpassing the June 1967 campaign. On June 9, Israel destroyed the entire Soviet-built Syrian aerial array in a matter of hours. Ninety Syrian MiGs were downed and 17 of 19 surface-to-air missile batteries were put out of commission, while the Israeli Air Force suffered no losses. The brutal—and for Israel, still controversial—nature of the Lebanon war of which this operation was part dimmed its shine in popular history, but the operation is still studied around the world. At the time it left analysts dumbfounded.

The 1982 air battle was the culmination of several years’ worth of tension on Israel’s northern border. Israel was concerned that Syria’s deployment of advanced aerial defense systems in Lebanon’s Beka’a Valley would limit its freedom to operate against PLO attacks from Lebanon. When Syria refused to pull back its defenses and U.S. mediation efforts failed, Israel planned for action. Although Israel was widely understood to enjoy a qualitative advantage, no one could have imagined the knockout blow it was about to deliver. Israel launched its aerial campaign on the fourth day of the offensive, commencing with a wave of unmanned proto-drones that served as decoys to trigger the Syrian radars. Rising to the bait, the aerial defense units launched rockets and thus exposed their locations to Israel’s artillery batteries and air-to-ground missiles. In parallel, Israel used advanced electronic jammers to further incapacitate Syrian radars, which cleared the path for the IAF’s fighter-bombers to attack the remaining missile launchers. When Syrian pilots scrambled for their planes, their communications had already been severed and their radars blinded. Israeli pilots later noted the “admirable bravery” of their Syrian counterparts, whom they downed at a ratio of 90 to 0.

A RAND report later concluded that Israel’s success was due not to its technological advantage. “The Syrians were simply outflown and outfought by vastly superior Israeli opponents. . . . The outcome would most likely have been heavily weighted in Israel’s favor even had the equipment available to each side been reversed. At bottom, the Syrians were . . . [defeated] by the IDF’s constant retention of the operational initiative and its clear advantages in leadership, organization, tactical adroitness, and adaptability.” In other words, Israel won because of its creative and skillful orchestration of a well-organized fighting force.

And then there is Israel’s most recent high-profile conflict with Syria. When Israeli intelligence discovered that Bashar al-Assad’s regime was building a plutonium reactor in the northeast Syrian Desert, Israeli and American leaders disagreed on the best course of action. Israel’s then-prime minister Ehud Olmert argued for a military solution, while the Bush administration feared the risks, demurred, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pushed to take the matter to the U.N. The Israelis, however, confident in their cyberwarfare capabilities, knew they could disable Syria’s air defenses. Moreover, as careful students of Syrian decision-making, they believed they could destroy the reactor without triggering a costly reaction from Assad. And on September 6,2007, Israel once again overturned the expert predictions and assessments of others and successfully destroyed the Syrian reactor at Al Kibar.

With Iran, American and Israeli leaders once again disagree on what might be gained by a military strike. While the American debate is riddled with doubts about the efficacy of force, Israeli experts harbor far fewer doubts. As former chief of military intelligence Amos Yadlin asserts unequivocally: “It can be done.” There are some Israeli strategists less optimistic, but the nature of their dissent is fundamentally different from that of American skeptics. U.S. policymakers and analysts question Israel’s ability to strike, or how far even the most successful strike might set back Iran’s nuclear program, but Israelis largely believe they can take effective military action. The question for Israeli strategists is at what cost? A 2012 IAF impact evaluation report predicted 300 civilian casualties in the event of an Iranian retaliatory missile attack. Former defense minister Ehud Barak offered a higher number, contending that open conflict with Iran would claim less than 500 Israeli casualties. Responding to Barak’s relatively optimistic assessment, onetime Mossad director Meir Dagan argued instead that an attack on Iran would take a heavy toll in terms of loss of life and would paralyze life in Israel.

Regardless of the number of potential casualties, the frank discussion of what an attack on Iran might cost Israel in human lives is an essential part of preparing the country, and steeling it, for the possibility of war. Israel has also devoted material resources to the eventuality of a military campaign against the regime in Tehran. According to Ehud Olmert, Israel has spent over $10 billion on preparations for a potential showdown with Iran. “We’ve worked long and hard to prepare ourselves,” former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi said recently. Israel, he added, “will be able to deal with the consequences of a military attack on Iran.”

The question of how exactly Israel might act to stop the Iranian nuclear program is an open one. In part, that’s because it’s hard to know how Israeli strategists see the problem or might reconfigure the working paradigm. The basic operational assumption is that Israel would attack from the air, but who knows? If the goal is to slow down Iran’s nuclear program, there are other ways to do it, perhaps by targeting Iran’s economy, its powergrid, its oil fields, or the regime itself. Or military action might not take the form of an aerial attack at all, but rather a commando heist of Iran’s uranium. Recall the raid on Entebbe: With commandos operating 2,000 miles from Israel’s borders disguised as a convoy carrying the Ugandan leader Idi Amin, that 1976 operation, like many of Israel’s air triumphs, combined strategic surprise with tactical deception.

What is certain, however—what many historical precedents make clear—is that it would be an error of the first order to dismiss Israel’s ability to take meaningful military action against Iran. Israel has left its enemies, as well as American policymakers and military experts, surprised in the past, and it may very well do so again.

Uri Sadot is a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations and holds a master’s degree in international affairs from Princeton University.

Iran went to Geneva with a plan: to buy time so that it can build a nuclear bomb. The international community, especially the West, had no plan. (ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images)

Well, I wondered in this place last week if David Cameron knew what he was doing in relation to the Iran nuclear negotiations in Geneva. And now the answer is clearly, ‘no’.

America and Europe’s overwhelming desire to declare a deal meant that there had to be a deal to declare. The P5+1 countries, with the ludicrous Catherine Ashton speaking for Europe, have indeed made a historic and terrible mistake.

The mullahs did not come to Geneva because they wished to give up their capability. And they did not come to the table because after 34 years of revolutionary Islamic governance they have seen the error of their ways. They came because international sanctions were beginning to hurt. Those sanctions – which took years to put in place – have now fallen apart thanks to a few days of incompetent negotiating on the part of the P5+1 plus some simple common sense from Tehran. People tend to say at this stage that the Iranians are ‘master negotiators’. They aren’t especially. They are simply fortunate to be playing against Catherine Ashton and a generation of other weak and short-sighted American and British politicians.

The result is that the Iranian regime has managed to walk away with a deal to relieve the pressure of sanctions at the very moment that the pressure was working and the very moment that it should have been kept up and ultimately used to break them. They now have the breathing hole they need to reinforce their power at home and continue their search for nuclear weaponry.

At the root of this debacle is the fact that the Iranians went into the sanctions knowing exactly what they wanted: time and the bomb. The P5+1 countries, by contrast, were riddled by doubt and muddled thinking.

There should only ever have been two aims with regard to the Iranian regime. The first is to ensure that it never ever gains the capability to develop nuclear weapons: not only to ensure that the world’s most destabilising regime never possesses the world’s most dangerous weaponry, but to ensure that it cannot precipitate a nuclear arms race across the Middle East.

The second aim, and one which appears to have slipped even further down any international agenda, is to see the end of the brutal rule of the mullahs. Sadly this does not even appear to be on the table any more. Ever since President Obama failed to come out in support of the brave Iranian protestors who rose up in 2009, the basic human rights of the Iranian people have been ignored utterly. So what that the regime promotes terror around the world? So what that it oppresses, rapes, tortures and executes its opponents at home? By negotiating with this regime and allowing it off the hook at this moment America, Britain and our allies have not only given a stay of execution to the mullahs, we have further undermined the hopes of any opponents of the regime inside Iran.

I was watching and listening to William Hague earlier today and I must say that it was a pathetic experience: a diminished figure trying to persuade a sceptical nation to support a demeaning deal. All he lacked was a winged collar, a piece of paper and the slogan: ‘nuclear peace in our time.’

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un presides over an urgent operation meeting on the Korean People’s Army Strategic Rocket Force’s performance of duty for firepower strike at the Supreme Command in Pyongyang, March 29, 2013, in this picture released by the North’s official KCNA news agency. (photo by REUTERS/KCNA)

On the morning of April 2, 2013, we woke up to two news items about the development of nuclear weapons by totalitarian states. The first item (in The Wall Street Journal) announced that the Iranians are putting their nuclear activities on hold so as not to exacerbate the crisis with the West before the national elections in June. The second (from the various news agencies) stated that the North Koreans are restarting their nuclear reactors and uranium enrichment sites, for the sake of peace, of course. Is there any connection between these two events? I’m not sure there isn’t.

Just a reminder: The first and so far the only time that Iran took any serious steps back from its nuclear program for military purposes occurred in 2003, when the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. The presence of American military might within mortar range of its borders convinced Iran not only to postpone, not only to slow down, but to go so far as to suspend the activities of its “weapons group” entirely. This was considered enough progress for the annual American National Intelligence Survey published a year later to put a damper on Israeli warnings by releasing tepid report claiming that the Iranians were generations away from having nuclear capabilities. This gave the ayatollahs’ regime the vital time-out it needed to restore past glory and come within arm’s length of military grade nuclear capabilities.

Now, as another nuclear front heats up, this one between North Korea and the United States, Tehran is facing a dilemma. Unlike Iran, North Korea is isolated and cut off from the rest of the world, and it has been since the get-go. It’s impossible to impose sanctions on it. It doesn’t care about what the West thinks. It just sticks its tongue out at the United States, even if it sometimes gives the impression that this isn’t a nation at all, but rather, a comic interlude.

Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that this comic interlude is armed from head to toe and has nuclear capabilities. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may look like a parody of some insane despot from Saturday Night Live, but the fact that he has his hand on the button in Pyongyang means that this isn’t funny anymore. North Korea manages to do whatever it wants, including the development of an ambitious nuclear program, including a declaration of war against its neighbor to the south. The fact that it avoids being punished for all that does not bode well for the American policy or for the international efforts to bring an end to the Iranian nuclear program by peaceful means.

The Iranian election is the most immediate reason why the Iranian religious and political leader Ayatollah Khameini ordered that progress on uranium enrichment be slowed down until after June. There are two ways to approach this recent directive: optimistically and pessimistically.

The pessimistic approach contends that this is just a tactical measure, and that there is no real intention to slow down the uranium enrichment process or, more generally, to change policy with regard to nuclear development. It is just another typical Iranian maneuver intended to buy more time. Khameini never had any intention of forgoing his nuclear program, but he decided that it would be better to wait until after the elections, when he has a president more to his liking. That will place him in a better position to take on the rest of the world.

The optimistic version of events paints a slightly different picture. It argues that the doomsayers who claimed that Khameini would try to use the nuclear crisis as leverage to ensure that the country elects an extremist president to his liking have made a serious mistake. What is actually happening is the exact opposite. Khameini realizes that sanctions and the conflict with the West have had enough of an impact on the Iranian public that the very chance of his candidates winning the next election is now in doubt. He recognizes that he has a problem, which is why he is shifting gears. He refuses to take any unnecessary chances, so he has separated nuclear development from politics. Advocates of diplomacy claim this as proof that sanctions really work, and effectively too. They are not only taking a toll on the Iranian government. They are even having an impact on its self-confidence.

Proponents of these two hypotheses each have legitimate arguments. Only history will judge which assessment was more accurate. The real question is what will happen if we discover that the pessimists were actually right? How will history act when we learn that the ayatollahs have missiles with nuclear warheads that can reach anywhere in the West? If that happens will anybody really care about some lively debate that took place in the first fifteen years of the millennium? It is far more likely that the whole debate be swept aside while governments rush to construct mass shelters against nuclear fallout.

All eyes are now on North Korea. They are also on Iran. America remains the leader of the free world. It’s the strongest superpower, and the only one that can do anything about this. Yes, it can. If Kim Jong-un keeps acting irresponsibly, it will send a clear message to Tehran that it doesn’t have much to worry about. On the other hand, if the United States sends the North Koreans an unequivocal message that there is a limit to the kinds of games it will tolerate, that message will reverberate all the way to Iran.

Similarly, if the United States does act after the next round of nuclear talks in Kazakhstan and after the elections in Iran, and it does so in a way that gets the ayatollahs to back off from their nuclear project, it will be much easier to rein in the North Koreans. What we are talking about is connected vessels, or more precisely, connected nuclear vessels. The conciliatory approach adopted by President Barack Obama during his first term was heard loud and clear, but its impact was a lot less noticeable on the ground. When the cat is away, the mice begin to play. Today’s world, four years and two months after Obama entered the White House, is a lot more dangerous than it was before he was elected.

Ben Caspit is a contributing writer for Al-Monitor‘s Israel Pulse. He is also a senior columnist and political analyst for Israeli newspapers, and has a daily radio show and regular TV shows on politics and Israel.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s vice president said Monday that Tehran will break the `grasping hands’ of newly re-elected President Barack Obama, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Mohammad Reza Rahimi also said Iran will overcome U.S.-led sanctions against the country.

“We will break grasping hands of Obama and we will be successful in bypassing the sanctions,” Rahimi was quoted as saying during a research and scientific exhibition at Tehran University.

Iranian officials dismiss the impact of last week’s U.S. elections, suggesting it will have little impact on Washington’s Iran policy. On Thursday President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad mocked the cost of campaigning, dubbing the vote a “battleground for capitalists”

Rahimi is known for hardline anti-Western statements. In June, he blamed global drug use on the teachings of Jewish holy texts.

The sanctions have hit Iran’s economy hard in the past months. They are imposed over Iran’s nuclear program, which the West suspects is aimed at weapons development. Iran denies the charge, saying its program is for peaceful purposes like power generation and cancer treatment.

Ahmadinejad and allies like Rahimi are anxious to play up Iran’s confrontation with the West. Conservatives who used to back him, but who turned against him last year over his perceived challenge to the clerical establishment, say he has mismanaged the economy and contributed to the country’s woes.

Iran’s parliament plans to question Ahmadinejad over the economy, and in the past has accused Rahimi of misusing public funds. The vice president denies the allegations.

“At times we submitted false information (to inspectors) in order to defend the nuclear facilities and our achievements, “Abbasi told the paper.” “We had no choice but to mislead the IAEA and other spies.”

Abbasi also described the practical tactics of how Iran misleads the West. “Sometimes we pretend to have a weakness we really do not have,” to throw inspectors off the track; if Iran is not capable of certain more basic things, the thinking is that they could not be capable of more advanced activities. “And sometimes we pretend to have a strength that we do not have. Afterwards, the effect of these tactics is evident when we have discussions with the IAEA,” Abbasi said.

Abassi, who is also a vice-president of Iran, said that the regime felt it had no choice but to act deviously. “It is unacceptable that the IAEA would consider us as a guilty party that has to prove its innocence. There are certain parties that accuse us of all sorts of things, and the IAEA tries to prove these accusations. It is similar to what happened to Saddam Hussein of Iraq.” Hussein was accused of amassing weapons of mass destruction by the U.S., but to date no such weapons have been found.

Abbasi added that Iran is being targeted by spy and security agencies around the world. “For seven years we have been observing British Mi6 agents spying on us, and gathering information on individuals who were eventually killed by Zionist agents.” Abbasi was referring to Iranian nuclear scientists who have been killed in automobile accidents or other incidents. Iran has accused Israel and Britain of being behind the killings, charges both countries deny.

Abbasi, who was speaking during a meeting of the IAEA, said that he did not believe the U.S. or Israel would attack Iran. However, he said that he expected international pressure to remain high, or even grow, with the IAEA bouncing the Iranian nuclear issue back to the UN Security Council for further action.By David Lev

In the wake of recent failed negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, it seems increasingly unlikely that a political solution will be reached regarding Tehran’s increasing uranium enrichment. As a result, some form of military clash between the US and Iran, while by no means certain, is becoming increasingly likely. Such a clash can take many different forms, and each presents different levels of risk.

Although many reports and analyses tend to focus on Iran’s missile forces and burgeoning nuclear capability, Iran’s steady build-up of asymmetric forces presents a threat to both Gulf commerce and the military forces of both the US and its regional allies, at least in the opening stages of a conflict. Unlike Iran’s missile forces, these forces are difficult to detect and counter, and can be used with a degree of deniability to harass or disrupt military operations and commerce in the Gulf.

The Burke Chair at CSIS has substantially updated and expanded its analysis of Iranian military forces to reflect recent events, as well as comments on the previous draft. Moreover, unlike previous versions, this analysis includes extensive reporting on arms transfers to the US’ Gulf allies in the last decade, which have had a significant impact on the balance of forces in the Gulf. The first part of this analysis is entitled “Iran and the Gulf Military Balance I: The Conventional and Asymmetric Dimensions.” It is available on the CSIS web site at: https://csis.org/files/publication/120612_Burke_IRan_Gulf_Military_Balance.pdf

Introduction 5

The Historical Background 5

Current Patterns in the Structure of US and Iranian Military Competition 13

Differing National Perspectives 17

Key Uncertainties in Assessing the Details of US and Iranian Military Competition 27

Competition in Conventional Military Forces 29

Ground-Based Air Defenses 43

Iran’s Largely Defensive Land Forces 47

Iran’s Naval Forces and Their Role in Asymmetric Warfare 51

Measuring the Overall Balance of US and Iranian Military Competition 63

“Closing the Gulf:” Iran’s Real World Military Options for Asymmetric Warfare 102

The Potential Strategic, Energy, and Global Economic Impacts of the Iranian Threat 104

Iran’s Growing Military Assets for Such a Mission 110

Iran’s Submarines and Submersibles 110

Iran’s Bases and Other Assets for “Closing the Gulf” 114

US and Arab Gulf Options for Competing with Iranian 128

US Forces in the Gulf 128

The US Partnership With Southern Gulf, Other Regional, British, and French forces 131

Changing the Ground Rules: What If Preventive Strikes – Not Sanctions – Trigger Iranian Efforts to Close the Gulf 173

Implications for US Policy 174

The second volume of this analysis is entitled Iran and the Gulf Military Balance II: The Missile and Nuclear Dimensions. It is available on the CSIS web site at: http://csis.org/files/publication/120222_Iran_Gulf_Mil_Bal_II_WMD.pdf . Both reports are working drafts of chapters in a comprehensive survey of US and Iranian competition made possible through the funding of the Smith Richardson Foundation, and which are to be published as an electronic book in early March. Comments and suggestions would be most helpful. They should be sent to Anthony H. Cordesman at acordesman@gmail.com.